The invention relates generally to patient health monitoring, and more particularly to a multi-parameter fiberoptic monitoring system and devices for patient health monitoring.
Monitoring the microenvironment and/or physiological state of a neonate significantly below typical gestational age is labor intensive and potentially injurious, given the frailty of the patient and sensitivity to medical sensing devices considered harmless by an adult. Neonates are required to stay in an incubation chamber (incubator), which provides thermal and little acoustic protection from the outside environment. Performing checkups on the patient by medical staff is problematic since applying care effectively perturbs the environment by opening the incubator, manipulating the neonate, applying sensors or equipment to the skin, cleaning, and other duties necessary to maintain the care area. Certain activities raise the ambient noise level, disrupt the infant's thermal environment, interfere with the circadian rhythm, and generally reduce the quality of life, with potentially serious implication for the baby's future.
The application of adhesive skin electrodes, for example, to monitor vital signs of the neonate may result in tearing of the skin as the sensors are removed at a later time since the skin of the neonate is extremely soft and pliable and has not hardened compared to the skin of adults. The opening of the skin provides an avenue for infection and contributes to the discomfort since the tearing of the skin is quite painful.
Further, the application of sensors requiring adhesion to the skin is generally intrusive to the patient, increasing their level of discomfort. In some cases, this results in poor sensor readout if the adhesive gel loses tack, or if the patient unconsciously manipulates the sensor by probing with fingers, scratching, etc.
The electrical environment of a patient care area, especially in the presence of electrocautery, defibrillation, or MRI equipment, is potentially harsh. The RF noise or eddy currents resulting from this equipment can cause interference to non-optical based patient sensing equipment since the electromagnetic fields created from the interfering equipment causes electrical artifacts on the acquired sensor data.
Patient monitors, as commonly known in hospitals today, usually have one cable associated for each sensor. In a high acuity care environment, for example, 10 ECG sensors for heart activity, 1 sensor for surface temperature, and 1 sensor for blood oxygen saturation already result in 12 cables hanging from the patient. Although harmless, this is bothersome for clinician and results in slow interaction when caring for the patient. The slight delays incurred over an entire workshift for every patient interaction result in an appreciable loss of productivity on the part of the caregiver.
Patient instrumentation is oftentimes dedicated where it is designed to perform a series of specific tasks in a hospital environment. In other cases, instrumentation can perform arbitrary tasks provided that a module supporting that task is physically connected to the module. This is problematic since sensors used to monitor a parameter require specialized electronics tailored to the requirement. The care institution therefore must manage a plurality of devices, accessories, configurations, and modules to support an adequate level of care for the local population.
Additionally, the humidity in neonatal microenvironments is generally much higher than that of the outside ambient environment to maintain skin pliability. This is also a breeding ground for microbes which can seriously compromise the health of a neonate, whose immune systems are far from developed.
The foregoing problems have generally been addressed through monitoring the incubator environment using single-point sensors and heating the neonate with infrared radiation. Further, monitoring the neonate has been performed using standard monitoring equipment that employs body-worn sensors to capture physiological data. The above approach is problematic however, due to issues concerning, without limitation, 1) real-time, continuous monitoring of airborne and waterbourne pathogens related from operation of a humidifier to moisturize the environment, 2) distributed temperature sensing to characterize and control the thermal environment, and 3) a means to characterized the motor activity of the neonate to assess neurological function or dysfunction.
A need therefore exists for a patient health multi-parameter monitoring system and/or patient health multi-parameter monitoring devices to overcome the foregoing shortcomings associated with present patient health monitoring systems and devices.